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Despite mountains of evidence, and who’s who of medical professionals begging the public to make it clear that mass travel amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is a terrible ideaThis week, Americans have traveled more than at any time in the past nine months, setting a pandemic-era travel record beyond any other time since the country began closing its doors as a result of the virus last spring.
According to a government spokesperson, more than a million people passed through Transportation Security Administration airport checkpoints on Wednesday, bringing the number of seven-day trips before Thanksgiving to about 6.8 million people in total. Earlier this month, the American Automobile Association predicted that around 50 million people will travel this year – a drop related to the pandemic from the total of 55 million people last year, although the organization noted that the majority of travelers would rather take the road than the air.
Still, the million travelers who passed TSA checkpoints on Wednesday represent the highest number of air travelers since March, just before the country began to begin lockdown proceedings in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Incredibly, the numbers for Wednesday – one of the few days that air travel has exceeded one million passengers since the start of the pandemic – still represent just under half of what the TSA recorded last year, when 2.6 million people embarked the day before Thanksgiving.
Incredibly, perhaps the biggest test is yet to come. Traditionally, the busiest travel day of the year in the United States arrives immediately next Thanksgiving. According to Forbes, if the percentage of pre-Thanksgiving air travelers holds throughout the weekend, this coming Sunday could see around 1.16 million people flying, up from around 2.9 million at the same time last year. .
Meanwhile, even with numbers down significantly from last year, the fact that a record number of people have chosen to travel now, nine months after the start of a pandemic that has already killed more than a quarter of a million Americans, and seems to be gaining strength, it’s hard to imagine that coronavirus cases will soon start to decline.
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